


Play It Again

by yellowedpaper (blu3cl0ud3473r)



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:46:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6184772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blu3cl0ud3473r/pseuds/yellowedpaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a Soulmate AU idea by whoopsrobots on tumblr: Their favorite song is the one that’s always stuck in your head, and it stops bothering you once you find them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play It Again

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like this is super poorly organized and is overall not really all that good so i might come back and fix it later, but tbh i've been avoiding doing work for a day so i just want to do something i semi-enjoy but yeah hope someone enjoys

            Connor remembers when he could never put a name to the piece.

            He knew it was piano, knew it sounded beautiful and was his favorite melody in the world, but whenever he asked anyone about the song, they had no idea. "Never heard of it." It was hard to believe that, among music teachers, music store owners, and even just piano fanatics, not a single person had ever recognized the piece.

            Connor had spent hours, entire days scouring the web, record stores, even just asking his friends to identify the piece. He never found the song, never knew anyone who could identify the piece.

            His first year at boarding school, Connor took advantage of the mandatory music classes the students took. He spent extra hours with the music teacher, humming the melody and tapping out the notes. It sounded unprofessional, broken, and awkward, but he knew it was the right melody. With the help of his teacher, Connor managed to write the entire piece down. Smiling down at it, he asked the teacher to show him how to play the piece, but when he heard it altogether, it didn't sound quite right. No matter how they changed it, it just... never sounded right.

            The closest it came was after nearly a hundred different renditions, a hundred new alterations, that Connor became mildly satisfied with what it sounded like. It wasn't quite the same, but at least he could hear it for real.

            So that version came to be the only piece Connor ever learned on the piano. It was the version that Connor would record and listen to, hide away in his room with when he wasn't quite feeling himself. On days that were really bad, Connor would lock himself in his room, turn the lights off, and just close his eyes and listen to the melody in his mind.

            Those days stopped coming when Connor met Aiden. Aiden, who was confident and suave and beautiful, who made Connor feel like he was walking on air and like there were butterflies waltzing around in his stomach. Aiden, who had Connor tempered to his touch, who made Connor feel whole. It was easy with him, they joked about everything and just understood each other in a way that Connor had never had with anyone else.

            Between studying for classes and the daily midnight rendezvous with his new boyfriend, Connor forgot about the song, pushed it to the back of his head. His new anthem consisted of sounds Aiden made and the way he said Connor's name.

            He stumbled upon the sheet music a couple years later. He hadn't had a use for the song in years. The nights where he used to sneak to the piano room and play the music for himself turned into nights spent in Aiden's arms. Excited, he found his way into his bed, where Aiden was waiting for him.

            "What's this?" Aiden asked.

            Connor smiled back at him, fondness in his eyes. "It's my soulmate song."

            "What, like, just one song?"

            Connor's smile dropped. "What do you mean?"

            "I mean, like hasn't your soulmate song changed over the years? Does your soulmate just listen to the same song over and over again?"

            "I don't know," Connor shot back, "do you?"

            Aiden ran a nervous hand through his hair, moving back towards the wall. Connor bitterly noted the space between them. "Con, what do you mean by that?"

            Connor swallowed nervously. "I mean... I thought we..." He could practically see his world falling apart right before his eyes.

            "What? That you and I were soulmates?" Aiden laughed, not the comfortable, loud kind that Connor loved to hear. It was tight, restricted, trying to bring humor into a situation that didn't call for it. "Come on, Connor." Aiden's voice was desperate. "You didn't really think we were soulmates, did you?"

            Connor didn't answer.

            "Come on, Con. It's not like we were going to happen. You knew this was just a temporary thing. I mean, I've told you about the songs I hear in my head. I've told you how they all sound like stuff my sister listens to."

            "I thought they were just songs you heard. I didn't think you'd be talking about your soulmate song, especially since you always said it was too girly for you. I just never thought you'd be talking about a girl's taste, much less your soulmate's." Connor never said the last part of it out loud. _I thought it'd be me._

This time, it was Aiden's turn to stay silent.

            "I think you should leave." Connor's voice wavered.

            Aiden nodded, collected his stuff, and walked out the door before Connor had a chance to stop him, before Connor had a chance to wish he had stayed. But Connor did.

            Tears threatening to fall, Connor bundled himself up in his blanket and curled up on his pillow. He pulled his phone out and, from muscle memory, started to go to the recordings but stopped before he could play the music, the song that ended the best thing that ever happened to him. _What real person actually only likes one song for the entirety of their life? God, whoever they are probably doesn't exist anyways_.

            For the first time in a long time, Connor fell asleep that night with puffy eyes and a tear-stained face.

            Life moved on from there. In a couple months' time, Connor got over Aiden. He graduated at the top of his class and moved on. He spent his undergrad years bettering himself, perfecting a version of himself that he approved of, because, hey, if he couldn't find this utopian "soulmate" then might as well enjoy himself, right? It became a mask, a facade of himself that he wore to strengthen the walls around his heart.

            All of which came crumbling down the second he heard the song playing in a music shop at the edge of town.

            Pulled back to the present, Connor dares to take a breath. The music itself keeps playing, the same unforgettable melody piercing the air. Connor doesn't remember walking into the shop, his legs working on their own. But he watches as the man plays the piece, watches as he moves with the melody, as his fingers dance over the ivory and ebony keys and bring Connor's entire childhood, all the time spent dancing around music stores searching for the piece, flooding back to the surface.

            Connor stands there, waiting, watching, enraptured as the man continues to fill the room with music in the most hauntingly beautiful way he could ever imagine, and all he can think is, it sounds _right_ , it finally sounds _right._

           When the piece ends, the stranger stands up and turns around, looking surprised to see Connor standing there.

            "Oh, hi! Sorry, I guess I didn't hear you come in," the stranger laughs, and it's the most melodious sound in the world and Connor decides right there that he wouldn't mind spending his entire life trying to hear that sound again. "Can I help you with anything?"

            Connor wets his lips, desperately trying to find his voice. "C-Can you play it again?"

            "What I was playing just now?"

            Connor nods frantically, feeling like a child lost, looking for his mother.

            The stranger furrows his brow, and Connor spends a moment taking in exactly how gorgeous he is, how gorgeous every aspect of him is, from his dark hair to his warm features, the width of his shoulders and the solid nature of his posture. Connor notices that the man looks older than him but in a way that reads mature and distinguished. "I mean, sure, but, is there a particular reason why?"

            "I've heard it for ages."

            The stranger stops at that, eyes widening for a moment, but probably brushing it off, probably thinking, _what a strange guy._ He sits down at the piano and plays the entire piece again, every bit as beautiful as the first time Connor heard it. This time, when he finishes, he turns around and stays planted on the piano bench.

            "Do you know what song that is?" Connor finds himself asking.

            The stranger nods. "Yeah, I do."

            "Do you know where I can find it?"

            He pauses a second before answering. "Here, only here."

            Connor looks at him, puzzled, waiting for an explanation.

            "It's my father's song. I've been playing it for ages. It's, uh, my favorite song."

            Connor nearly chokes on his words. "Mine, too."

            Connor learns that the stranger's name is Oliver. His name is Oliver Hampton, and his father, also a talented musician, wrote the piece for Oliver when he was born. It was easily Oliver's favorite piece when he was growing up, since he heard it so much, and because he had been hearing the piece since before he was born, it was Connor's, too.

            When Oliver was eight, his father died. Oliver took up playing the piece as solace, learning how to perfect the song so that he could, in a sense, honor his father. Oliver tells all this to Connor sitting on the floor of the music shop against the piano, the "closed" side of the door facing out and a warm cup of coffee in both his and Connor's hands. Oliver tells him how he grew up wanting to open a music shop because that had been the dream his father had and the dream he instilled in his son. It was his father's dream first, Oliver had said, but because he never got the chance to, it became Oliver's dream. Connor hears about his confusion over never hearing another song in his head.

            "Honestly, I thought I didn't have a soulmate. I thought it was the weirdest thing in the world, hearing my own favorite song playing through my head."

            Connor shrugs, warmth in his eyes. "I've never heard a more beautiful song, one more worthy of my attention than yours."

            Connor tells Oliver about his own life, tells him about how he had spent his life combing through stores and interrogating musicians to try and find the song. He even plays the recording he keeps on his phone, had always kept. "It just, it never sounded right to me. Not until I heard you play it."

            "What if I play it again? So you can record it and it'll sound right this time?"

            Connor looks up into Oliver's eyes and feels so much emotion bubbling up in his chest. For the first time in his life, Connor just  _knows._  This is what love feels like: having someone there for you, even if it's for something as trivial and as unnecessary as playing a piece of music. He knows his voice would crack if he spoke, so instead, Connor settles for nodding, moving to the piano bench and sitting down next to Oliver this time. He places his phone on the side of the piano and watches as Oliver plays. Midway through the song, he closes his eyes and rests his head against Oliver's shoulder. It feels like a dream.

            When the piece ends, Connor lifts his head up, reaching for his phone and stopping the recording. He turns to look up at Oliver, whose eyes find his. There's a moment shared between the two of them, in the quiet safety of the music shop before their eyes are closed and their lips are pressed and their hands find each other.

            They try a relationship.

            It's hard, at first. Connor had fallen into a habit of sleeping around after everything with Aiden went south. The first time it happens, Oliver throws him out. Connor spends his night sitting against the door, humming the melody to the song until Oliver pulls him back in, pressing kisses to his skin and murmuring soft whispers of, "God, you're freezing", while Connor makes his own of "I'm sorry" and "I love you" and "I'll never do it again". It doesn't happen again, but every time Connor stays out too late, Oliver gets worried, is skeptical, doesn't trust himself and sometimes just doesn't trust Connor.

            But it gets easier with time. Years pass, and Connor stops trying to sabotage good things that happen to him. Connor stops trying to talk himself out of being worthy of Oliver, and Oliver stops trying to convince himself he isn't good enough for Connor to stay.

            They get married. There's a small ceremony, family and friends, and they're dressed in expensive tailored suits that make Connor feel like he's getting married to a god. They go on a honeymoon and have a grand time, and Connor feels like the world couldn't get any better than this.

            But in the end, Connor's favorite moments are still of those at home with Oliver because on bad days, Connor will come home, toe off his shoes, and go to collect a kiss from his husband. Oliver will pull him into his arms because he'll know something's wrong, because Oliver knows him well enough and loves him enough to recognize it. After a while, Connor will pull him over to the baby grand in their house, the one Connor specifically splurged on because of how much he loves Oliver. Connor will pull him over to the piano and Oliver will sit down and play the song and Connor will rest his head on his shoulder just like on that first day in the piano shop. Connor will close his eyes and everything wrong in the world will go away with Ollie by his side. For five minutes, all Connor will think about is the way the melody sounds just right, the way Oliver plays it perfectly.

            When the song ends, Connor will look up at Oliver and press a kiss to his shoulder and whisper, "Play it again," just loud enough for the two of them to hear.

            And because Oliver loves him, he will.

            Connor will rest again, feeling overwhelmingly safe and at home because home is here where the melody sounds beautiful and curves just the right way, where the song in his head is the one his soulmate plays so well, where things are okay and life is good.

            Home is where Ollie is.


End file.
